Warchief

Hello, I've just finished Avernum 2: CS and grabbed a copy of the Avadon 3 demo to try. I quickly ran into the same issues mentioned by Vent using a Macbook Pro Retina 15" Late 2013 on 10.10.5. I'm a little confused as to why the resolution picker is still offered if it doesn't actually do anything. However Jeff's response in the other support thread about manually switching resolutions did the trick for me. Scrolling in fullscreen is difficult given that the menu bar and dock are auto-revealed when mousing over them. I'm pretty sure there is an easy fix for this problem, which I hope that Jeff would consider offering in a patch. Previous games like Avernum 2: CS (presumably) used the older CGDisplayCapture APIs in order to black out all screens, and prevent normal system interactions. Without those APIs you need to make a small change when invoking NSView's enterFullScreenMode:options: method. In the options dictionary, include the NSFullScreenModeApplicationPresentationOptions key, where its value contains the bitwise or of both NSApplicationPresentationHideMenuBar and NSApplicationPresentationHideDock. I'm an iOS developer by day who knows very little about AppKit but it should work... https://developer.ap...s?language=objc Personally I would also prefer the option of capturing all the displays (make this a checkbox in the launcher), otherwise your cursor will exit the screen in a multi-monitor setup. Just wanted to weigh in, as this is a pretty important usability issue IMHO. I haven't bought Avadon 3 yet, but have purchased every Spiderweb game since Geneforge 5 & Avernum 5 were released.

For anyone who just has to play now.... Avadon is up on the FTP! WAIT UNTIL THE ANNOUNCEMENT Edit: Look like you guys beat me to it! Downloading now...

I've just got the FTP mounted on my finder pointed to the mac downloads directory.

What, you mean it won't be released today!? I really need a distraction from work. @Major Haste: Judging by the timing of the last announcements you could be right. But i suppose monday is technically still "Late February" though.

If you take a look at A6 it seems like 'Avernum 6/Avernum 6 Files/Graphics Core/G290.png' contains most of the text in bitmap forum. The text color, and possibly the font could be changed, but the letters would need to stay the same size for everything to work in game. I must say that text readability has been an issue for me at times, even on a 24" monitor. Once i lowered my resolution down to 1600x1000, i was ok though. P.S. All this talk about font sizes and such reminds me of the widescreen/resolution mods for Planescape Torment. I loved how you could multiply the text size to pretty much whatever you wanted.

Its not an ideal solution, but in A6 you could set the resolution to the lowest possible setting. That would be the best for text size, but would probably not match the native resolution of your monitor. Also, I'm assuming that you're on windows, but on the mac you can hold down control plus scroll up/down to zoom in to the window.

Wait, are you saying that Jeff's games are still written using the Carbon APIs on mac? If so he may need to update to Cocoa for 10.7 "Lion" anyway... I really wouldn't be surprised if Apple removed support from the next OS release. Also, since the mac app store doesn't accept apps using deprecated APIs he would need to rewrite for Cocoa to get on there (i assume that's what randomizer's quote is referencing)

Just wanted to say that i agree with the OP: the enemies in recent spiderweb games have too much health. FYI, I play on normal, which is already relatively easy with a well constructed party. Unfortunately towards the later stages of A5, and A6 I've found that the battles sometimes devolve into this repetitive cycle of attacking and mass healing until your enemies health bars slowly vanish. During my playthroughs of both games I decided to take a few weeks break somewhere in the middle because I was getting bored of the combat. After the time away, I did thoroughly enjoy finishing both titles, and would highly recommend them if I knew anyone who was into old-school RPGs besides myself. I would also consider trying the hard difficulty if the enemies health were not increased so significantly (which only makes the battles last even longer, not fun IMHO). Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of both the Avernum and Geneforge series (although I have yet to play A1-3, and G1-3), so much so that I have only tried a handful of other RPGs since I (re)discovered Jeff's games. The last thing I want to do is come off as sounding overly negative, and I realize that some of my (admittedly few) posts on this forum probably paint me in that light. Despite the health issues, other aspects of the battles have significantly improved over the course of the last three Avernum games. For example I like the greater emphasis on more unique boss encounters, and grouped as opposed to scattered enemies. Let me just finish by saying that I have been reading the Avadon developer diaries and I am really looking forward to the new series. I like the direction that Jeff is taking, with less of an emphasis on healing and more on damage dealing. Heck, I would put my $25 down right now if it would make the game come out any faster. Anyways, keep on gaming spiderwebbers! And I'm sure I'll be making at least a few posts closer to Avadon's release (yay for getting the mac version first).

I ran OpenGL profiler on A6 (mac) and it looks like Jeff is using immediate mode for drawing. This might be why the performance is less than optimal.

I bought the first Eschalon, but never finished it. The demo had me hooked but I grew tired of the gameplay about half way through. For me, playing a magic user was extremely hard as I was constantly resting to regain energy. I suppose my character probably needed more perception for regeneration and energy/level.. I tried to split my skills between melee and magic so I'd have a backup for when my energy ran out. Maybe I should've focused more on pure magic (or should i say magick)? Also, once I learned some of the second tier attack spells I was a bit disappointed to find out that they usually did less damage/mana than my original fireblast spell, simply using up my mana more quickly for the same effect. I read that in EB2 there is some sort of bonus when you cast an attack spell at a higher level so that might change things up a bit. As mentioned by other posters the walking pace in Book 1 is very slow. I got pretty bored of exploring nearly identical forest areas, which were basically just thin paths through otherwise impassable woods. I never made it to the south west side of the map though... On the plus side the simultaneous turn-based combat was neat, and the graphics are nicely animated for the most part. I will give Book 2 a try when the Mac version is released to see what the changes are like.

Cool, thanks Jeff.

I can confirm that the same problem happens on my system using 10.6.3, and A6 v1.0.3. I tested on several audio devices including the built-in speakers, headphone out, digital out, and a USB audio codec. The opening music only plays on the right channel like you said.

Good luck! Those south bridge guards are a real pain, definitely save them for later.

This is sort of off the top of my head, and I've only played the Fromello section once back in Dec/Jan but anyways... When you first enter the occupied lands you are in a large lake. Land on the eastern / north eastern edge. The avernite camp is located in some tunnels close to there. They can heal you before you go further into Slith lands. You need to cross one of two bridges to reach Fromello, so take the one to the far north since the southern bridge is heavily guarded. After crossing the north bridge head down to Fort Draco. From there go east and you'll run into "The Shadow" and some of his minions. You can't defeat the shadow here as he will just teleport away before he dies. Continue east as far as you can. Eventually you want to end up north east of Fromello where you find the Bone Cave. Make you way through the bone cave, and find the avernite mage who is digging tunnels into Fromello. Follow his tunnels towards Fromello until you run into The Shadow again. This time you'll actually have to kill him in order to gain access to Fromello. Head up the stairs into the city and you'll end up inside the palace. Once your in the palace go east into the throne room and challange Ghavassa (sp?). After that run like hell to the south east corner of Fromello and take the pylon out of there. Simple right? Like I said its been a while so I might have got a few details wrong... Anyone else feel free to correct me if I've made any mistakes.

Wow that's one tough fight! So far I've only managed to get him down to about 3/4 health before before he blasts my guys to pieces or the demons come get me (normal difficulty). I'll have to try keeping my spellcasters out of his AOE radius next time, but I was able to get Melanchion to miss a few turns using slow. Its really funny how he incinerates his followers in the first turn though.. I was worried that I'd have to fight them too. BTW is Melanchion any easier in A5? I never tried to take him on then, but you'd think he might be a little weaker since he's supposed to be younger during that game.

Just wanted to add a few more comments to this thread for those with Macbooks / Macbook Pros who are having fan and heat issues. I've been meaning to try Coolbook for about a year now, and I finally bought a copy over the holidays. After maybe an hour of testing (and a few kernel panics) I was able to find some good voltage/frequency pairs that are stable on my CPU. In some cases I was able to reduce my CPUs operating voltage by almost 0.2V over the factory defaults. Not only does my computer now use less power (resulting in longer battery life), but it also runs much cooler! When playing A6 my fans are much quieter than ever before. Its also very helpful for other demanding tasks such as 1080p video playback, flash video (come on adobe, could you make it a bit faster on mac!), or encoding using handbrake. So, if you have $10 to spend and a bit of time to test the settings out you should see a big improvement. It almost feels like I have a brand new machine!

The sounds are decent, at least they provide you with feedback about whats happening and thats the important part right? I always play with the volume at quiet, and background sounds off. I guess I've just always seen Jeff's approach to sounds as very minimalist which is fine as long as I'm playing my own music alongside them... Actually i wouldn't mind a "quietest" setting or some sort of volume slider since even quiet is a bit too loud for me. A question for those much more experienced with modding Avernum: Lets say I wanted to replace some of the attack sfx, is there any way to add more variety? I could have two monster growling sounds instead of just the same one. Of course things like gameplay, story, AI, and graphics are much more important, so I'm glad Jeff chooses to focus on those. Then again I think I would've paid a few extra $ to see my dual-wielding characters hold two swords! Edit: Looks like A6's sound files are Ogg Vorbis at either 22.05kHz, or 11.025kHz, 16-bit mono.

Thanks for the tip Randomizer! I've got Wetzel's key and am off to Fort Avernum.

I'm trying to find a peaceful resolution to the Silvar's Traitors quest. I started by just talking to Wetzel directly, but there didn't seem to be any way to get him and his men to back down without a fight. After some more exploring I discovered the Horde infiltrators below Silvar and took them out. I also found the trapdoor that they were trying to break through. When I confronted Wetzel again there were no new dialogue options. I was hoping that I could get him and his men to disband after killing the slith but no luck as far as i can tell. What else do I need to do? I really don't want to kill him if its not necessary...

Count me in as someone who is annoyed with this behavior. I like to listen to music while playing spiderweb games, and I don't want my fans blaring at the same time. For G4 (if i remember correctly), G5, and A6 the main thread will try and draw as fast as possible so one of your cores will always be pegged at 100%. Sorry to sound like a broken record, but if we could set a framerate cap then at least A6 wouldn't be using 100% CPU in underground/simpler areas. IMHO, running the animations at more than 30FPS looks silly anyways since it just causes movement and spells to happen more quickly instead of being any smoother.

Just wondering, are you playing at your computer's native resolution? If so, perhaps try something smaller and see if you notice any difference. On my MBP 2.4Ghz / 8600M I found the performance to be unacceptably slow during battles. I was trying to drive an external display at 1920x1200 (lid closed mode), but switching to 1600x1000 improved things for me. Sure, its not the native resolution but at least it runs more smoothly. I have no experience running on a GMA 950 based system though....

I'm on 10.5.8 myself. I've got a copy of Snow Leopard sitting on my desk, I just haven't had the time to make the jump yet (plenty of software to re-install, update or check for compatibility). I do have the final SL developer build on an external drive partition, but I haven't tested on that.

Thanks for all the hard work Ben! I must say that your illustrations really help sell the Geneforge and Avernum universes for me. They wouldn't be the same without your artwork.

Yes, I've noticed the same thing as well. At first I thought that A6 might be doing a busy wait in the runloop but I also came to the conclusion that it is probably just trying to draw the highest framerate possible. I really wish there were a framerate cap or something. Since A6 is completely turn based rendering at a higher framerate basically just makes the mouse more responsive, and animations run faster. I very briefly profiled A6 using shark and noticed that the main thread was using ~1.5% of its time calling unix time functions. That seems a bit odd to me but anyways... I use an external 1920x1200 24" monitor with my Macbook Pro when I'm at home. I usually run in lid-closed mode, only driving the external monitor while gaming. On my 2.4GHz C2D Macbook Pro I get 15fps or less in complex areas like the castle (at my monitor's native resolution). I always ran Geneforge 5 at 1920x1200 and it was quite playable, while A6 is not. Even though Grand Central Dispatch is quite cool, its not really suited for realtime applications since it doesn't make any guarantee that things will be completed on your schedule.

Thanks Randomizer, I did have a chance to play around with the settings a bit and I found that changing the graphics quality (to partial graphics) didn't have much effect on frame rate. I tested all the 16:10 widescreen resolutions (or at least the ones that are available to me) and I've settled on 1600x1000 as the best compromise between speed and quality for now. At 1920x1200 my framerate was dropping down to 15 in the castle, and lower during some fights. As for the CPU usage, thats another issue. I guess I should start a thread on the support forum rather than hijacking this one...